Cheney, the Turks, and Nuclear Proliferation

The exposure of the Valerie Plame Wilson and her CIA non-official cover Brewster Jennings & Associates front company and her official cover Counter-Proliferation Division colleagues by neo-con elements in the Bush administration has taken a deeper turn down the rabbit hole of the CIA Leakgate scandal. While the neo-cons in Washington and Jerusalem continue to rattle sabers against Iran’s nuclear program and were responsible for the phony intelligence on Iraq’s non-existent nuclear program, the very same neo-con elements have not only turned a blind eye to Turkey’s acquisition of nuclear technology but have been involved in the proliferation of such technology to and through Turkey. The interest of Brewster Jennings and the CIA in Turkish nuclear smuggling activities potentially involved moving up the food chain and stinging individuals close to Vice President Dick Cheney, including Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

Turkey, a country that has been a nexus of nuclear technology and drug smuggling and a center of attention for Russian, Israeli, and Turkish criminal syndicates, NATO, the powerful American Turkish Council and its defense contractor sponsors, the Mossad, the Turkish Armed Forces and MIT intelligence agency, the Abdul Qadeer (AQ) Khan nuclear smuggling network, and financiers of the so-called “Al Qaeda,” has been intent on acquiring nuclear technology for many years with scant western media attention. In the last several months, Turkey has made a hasty decision to build a nuclear reactor at the Black Sea port of Sinop, ironically the location of a former National Security Agency listening station that monitored, among other things, nuclear developments in the USSR.

The most likely choice has emerged as Canadian CANDU (CANada Deuterium Uranium reactors manufactured by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.). The main concern about these style reactors is the ease with which they can produce tritium. Tritium can be used as the trigger catalyst for both fission and fusion nuclear bombs. India’s 1998 nuclear test was accomplished with tritium from CANDU reactors. More ominously, CANDU reactors are ideal for producing weapons grade plutonium.

On November 4, 1996, an auto accident on the Susurluk-Bursa highway in Turkey focused the attention of Turks on the close ties between the Turkish government and narcotics and weapons smugglers. Killed in the car were police officer Husein Kotzadag, a close aide to Home Affairs Minister Mehmet Agar, a former high police official. Also killed was his fellow passenger, Abdullah Tzatli, the chief of the right-wing fascist Grey Wolves. Injured in the accident was Sedat Butzak, a member of Parliament for the right-wing DYP (True Path Party).

Tzatli was involved in the escape of Mehmet Ali Agca from a Turkish prison. Agca then traveled to Rome where he attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981. Although the assassination attempt on the Pope was blamed on the Soviet KGB and Bulgarian intelligence, the plot was a “false flag” operation designed to ratchet up tensions with the Soviet Union at a time when a group of former Democratic Cold Warriors, who once nested in Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s office, became arch anti-Soviet officials in the Reagan administration. Many of these same individuals would later serve in the George W. Bush administration where they were not only the architects of America’s failed invasion and occupation of Iraq but were also deeply involved in the nuclear and narcotics smuggling activities of Turkey’s devlin deret (deep state).

Tzatli was also wanted on a number of Interpol red notices (criminal arrest warrants). However, his Turkish diplomatic passport managed to get him out of prison in France and Switzerland.

The CIA itself assisted members of the Turkish “deep state.” The agency was implicated in allowing a Interpol wanted, drug smuggler and Turkish government hit man, Abdullah Catli, to “escape” from a Swiss prison. Catli was serving time for conviction of heroin smuggling. Catli’s influence permitted Mesut Yilmaz to become the ANAP-Motherland Party’s chief leader and later Prime Minister of Turkey through the use of Catli’s “support” network in the eastern Turkish border regions. These support networks were directly involved in the smuggling of drugs and other illegal cargo. Both Tansu Ciller, a later DYP Prime Minister, and Yilmaz openly defended accusations of their supporting smuggling as necessary to defend the Turkish State against terrorists (i.e. Kurdish resistance). However, this was merely a reason for the state to be involved in narcotics smuggling. Yilmaz was charged by the State Public Prosecutor with corruption during his tenure as prime minister. He was found innocent under by the Supreme Court in 2006 in a case that lacked transparency. Three months ago, Yilmaz announced he would return to politics.

Mesut Yilmaz is allegedly a key element of the drug trade and money laundering and its international dimensions. Yilmaz’s nephew, Mehmet Kutman, is the owner/founder of Global Menkul Degreler (Global Securities). According to experienced Istanbul bankers, “They [Global Securities] came from nowhere” and quickly amassed enough money to compete with the top echelons of Turkish banking and brokerage houses. Kutman, on a personal level, has made hundreds of millions of dollars from insider information passed on by his uncle’s political appointees in Ankara. In 1999, it was reported by the Cumhurriyet newspaper that he made 2.5 billion US dollars from advance information gleaned from IMF documents held by Ankara authorities and leaked to him by his uncle.

Global Securities is also reportedly a linchpin in transfer and laundering of the Turkish state illicit drug money. His blatant flouting of the law has earned Kutman a number of enemies in Turkey. A failed bomb attempt on his life last year was largely unreported by the media. Currently, the largest retail stock broker in Turkey, Global Securities is suspected of involvement in worldwide drug laundering activities.

The largest port in Turkey, Kusadasi, was refinanced in a deal through Global Securities that enabled the Romanian-born Israeli shipping billionaire Sami Ofer (owner of Zim Shipping) to acquire the largest stake. Later, Zim shipping tendered a bid to acquire and develop the largest port in Istanbul, Galataport. The Turkish Maritime Authority overturned Zim shipping’s winning bid when it learned that the Turkish government granted a hugely favorable financing scheme to Zim Shipping.

The Turkish government also secretly sold 15 percent of the state owned oil firm TUPRAS through Global Securities. Turkish courts overturned this sale after the Islamist AKP Party Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, admitted that he had being lying about a personal relationship with Zim after newspapers disclosed his travel tickets to the Far East with Ofer. Erdogan also equivocated about his meeting with Ofer’s son, Eyal, at the annual elitist gab fest at Davos, Switzerland. In fact, the relationship between the Islamist Erdogan and Ofer are so close, Ofer has publicly referred to Erdogan as the “second Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.” Ataturk is the revered founder of the modern Turkish state.

Recently, the Italian bank IMI (Banca IMI) purchased 90 percent of Global Securities. Banca IMI is reported to be involved in narcotics money laundering. Banca IMI also just purchased the American Bank of Albania in Kosovo. In May, IMI bought the Albanian-Italian Bank. Kosovo, a UN-run contrivance that is protected by the United States military, is a well-known distribution center for Turkish refined heroin from a current bumper crop of opium in American and NATO-occupied Afghanistan.

There has also been a recent rush by neo-con influenced media empires to acquire Turkish media enterprises. For example, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation recently purchased Turkey’s huge TGRT television network, while CanWest Global, which is owned by hard-line supporters of Israel’s Likud Party, purchased Turkish radio stations Super FM and Metro FM, with the help of Global Securities.

The Brewster Jennings & Associates/CIA interest in Turkey’s role in nuclear proliferation led to individuals with ties to Cheney’s office.

How does Israel figure into a government led by Turkish Islamists? Global Securities’ Mehmet Kutman introduced Prime Minister Erdoğan to Sami Ofer in order to gain political support for Zim’s bid for the Istanbul port. There is now a nuclear reactor suddenly announced by Erdogan to be built in Sinop. Along with the reactor, a huge port facility is to be announced for the city of only 250,000. Zim Shipping is bidding for the Sinop port construction. Some observers believe that Zim wants to be close to the Afghan opium trans-shipments to Europe through a modern port on the Black Sea.

Others say it is part of a Israeli-Turkish ploy to provide cover for the CANDU nuclear reactors and secretly extract weapons grade plutonium from the reactor. Global Securities’ Canadian co-owner is currently being investigated by the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) for not reporting undisclosed assets—million dollar homes on the Aegean Sea and in the United States.

Bringing together an Islamist Party and Israel would, at first, appear to be an awkward alliance. However, there is a track record between Israel and Dubai, the financial center that helped transfer money from Pakistan to the 911 hijackers. When the Bush administration was hammering out a deal to allow Dubai Ports World to manage ports throughout the United States, there was a huge public outcry. However, support for Dubai Ports World soon came from an unusual source: Zim Shipping. The defense of Dubai Ports World, owned by the Dubai government, came despite the obvious prohibition of the UAE to do business with Israel pursuant to the Arab Boycott.

The US also arrested an South African Orthodox Jewish businessman named Asher Karni for selling nuclear parts to Pakistan via Dubai interlocutors. Karni’s friend, Zeki Bilmen of New Jersey-based Giza Technologies, a Turkish Jewish businessman, was also implicated in selling nuclear triggered spark caps to Pakistan. And one company suddenly moved out of the World Trade Center North Tower to Norfolk, Virginia with its 200 workers shortly before 9-11, in order to “save on rent” despite a decades long presence and forfeiture of a $50,000 lease guarantee. That company — Zim Shipping.

On June 13, 2006, WMR reported the following: The Turkish nexus of the Karni-Bilmen-Humayun [Khan]/A Q Khan smuggling network was of primary interest to both the CIA and FBI. It is also noteworthy that Judge [Thomas]Hogan, who dealt with the Karni case, was also the judge who ordered the FBI raid of Louisiana Democratic Representative William Jefferson’s congressional office. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who has reportedly been under investigation for receiving Turkish campaign donations and his ties to [Jack] Abramoff, strongly condemned the FBI raid of Jefferson’s office. After Hastert’s protests, the Justice Department leaked word to the media that the Abramoff scandal extended to include Hastert. Essentially, Abramoff money was being used by the Justice Department as a weapon against Bush administration critics. WMR has also learned that Abramoff’s money was also used to blackmail other members of Congress who were investigating the Israeli connection to nuclear smuggling and the A Q Khan network.Source